Cell Dynamic Sky System

A modest attempt at development on AltSci Cell can be viewed below. Months now with very little progress is disappointing, but I suppose I'll continue on. A rant about how easy laziness is would probably not advance progress any better than the past rants, so I'll spare you.

Today, I came up with a few ideas on the way to and from Uwajimaya Asian market. The first is that the sky has a quantifiable set of properties even though it is very complex and interesting in reality. But complete quantification of every meteorological property of the sky is not my plan. I want a fairly reasonable dynamic sky so that the player is not faced with 24 hours of daylight and something to break up the blue sky and black night. Adding a sunrise and sunset is not the only thing that a developer can do. Adding a gradient to the sky also helps. Artists will tell you that the sky has a white part near the horizon. Some days the sky is very deep blue, some days it is very light blue. How can we decide? First lighten and darken the sky randomly by day. Secondly, use the time of day to decide the deepness of the color. The next thing is clouds. It's obvious that the sky will have clouds in it some days. How do you properly add clouds? One way is by adding the clouds to the texture. Another way is by having a transparent layer with different types of clouds. This way if you really want to have fun, you can make moving clouds. Of course you can make textured clouds move, but it might require extra work. The final thing is stars. Of course, it's easy to add stars to a sky, right? Well, you are going to have a bit of trouble depending on your choice of UV coordinates or if your sky is a box. It's possible to do it correctly, it's just a matter of work.

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Spam Server Analysis

by Javantea aka. Joel R. Voss
Analysis: Jan 9-Aug 26, 2006
Write-up: Sept 8, 2006
Botnets
Spam Server Analysis 0.6 [sig]
Spam Server Analysis 0.4 [sig]
Spam Server Analysis 0.1 [sig]
50 MB of Test Spam [sig]

Spam servers are generally accepted to be among the worst netizens currently residing on the net. Most are zombie botnets, some are open relays or proxies, but some are legitimate businesses in foreign countries. Since spam is illegal in the US, any server sending spam (with quite a few exceptions) is committing a crime. Of course, legislators have no concept of legitimate enforcement, so the fact that spam is a crime does not affect the level of spam that users receive.

Detection, analysis, and blacklisting of spam servers is the proper method to eradicate spam servers. While certain methods of unblacklisting will be required, blacklisting has no downsides. Occasional spammers will not be blocked until they make themself a nuisance.

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Progress on AltSci Cell Nov 28, 2006

Hi,

I thought I'd update this blog with some actual AltSci Cell information. It's been over a month since my last post. But actually, I've only gotten a few days of work done on AltSci Cell, so it hasn't been very long.

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AI Coder for Fuzzing Scripting Languages

by Javantea aka. Joel R. Voss
Nov 9-10, 2006
AI Coder 1 version 0.1 Source [sig]

Scripting languages have become an important part of programming functionality. Often, scripting languages are run in a sandbox with a specific piece of memory available and all code interpreted by a program written to execute only a subset of the computer's functionality. This has allowed a system on the web where client-based code can be run on the clients for quick reaction time and specific features. Most of the actual code (data retrieval, calculation, and storage) needs to be run on the server, so it leaves the client code to be nearly all real-time display. In fact, most webpages need no actual client-side code to be perfectly functional. However, more and more sites are relying on increasingly complex scripting libraries including AJAX, math, and data handling. Running a SHA1 hash on a client-side may be useful for many purposes, but many problems arise with these systems.

Browsers must handle a large amount of useful script as well as a large amount of invalid script without detracting from user experience. Compliance with standards is also an important factor in writing a browser. With these factors in mind, obvious security questions arise. Many of these have been addressed by browser developers, yet many have not. Javascript is obviously headed to be the leading cause of DoS if it is not already. It has also become a major threat to user privacy due to Cross-site scripting (XSS) attacks as well as malicious phishing attacks.

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